Fr. John (Krestiankin)

Recollections of a spiritual son

One
day my spiritual father, Archimandrite John
(Krestiankin) of the Pskov-Caves Monastery, called me
and said: "I am going to die soon. So please do me
a favour, write down what you remember and what you
want to tell people about me. Because afterwards you
all are going to write something anyway, and you might
come up with stories as ridiculous as they did with
poor Father Nikolai, who “resurrected cats”
and other fables like that. So I want to check
everything myself for my peace of mind.”[1]

Thus, fulfilling my spiritual father's obedience, I
began this task in the hope that Batiushka himself would
separate the wheat from the chaff, perhaps suggest some
things that I might have forgotten, and, as always,
correct any mistakes I might have made.

I will not write very much about what Fr. John meant to
me. My whole monastic life was inseparably connected with
him. He has been and remains for me the ideal of an
Orthodox Christian, a monk, and a loving and demanding
priest and father.

It would be impossible, of course, to re-tell everything
that happened over the course of our relationship. His
spiritual counsels can be read in his published letters.
In my opinion, they are the best that have been written in
the area of spiritual and moral literature in Russia for
the last fifty years. I would like to relate something
else, known to me personally.

For me, Fr. John's main spiritual quality was not only
his gift of discernment, but also his unshakeable faith in
the all-good and perfect Providence of God, which leads a
Christian to salvation. An epigraph to one of Fr.
John's books is something he often repeated: "The
main things in spiritual life are faith in God's
Providence and discernment with guidance." Once, in
answer to my perplexity, Batiushka wrote: "At the
moment I am reading a passage from the Old Testament, and
what depth [I find in it]: A man's heart deviseth
his way, but the Lord directeth his steps (Prov.
16:9). The wise Solomon bore this out. You, also,
in your own life must be convinced that it can be no other
way."

I don't want to force my opinion on anyone, but I am
deeply convinced that Fr. John was one of the very few
people living in our times to whom the Lord revealed His
Divine will-about specific people and about events taking
place in the Church and the world. This is probably due to
the highest manifestation of love for God and devotion to
His holy will, in response to which the Lord reveals the
destiny of people to the Christian ascetic, making such a
man a sharer in His mysteries. I repeat that I don't
want to force my opinion on anyone, but I have been led to
this feeling by many real-life stories connected with Fr.
John. And it is not only my opinion. My closest spiritual
friends, the now deceased Fr. Raphael and Abbot Nikita,
who introduced me to Fr. John, thanked God first of all
for the fact that their spiritual father was a man to whom
God's will was revealed, and each of us experienced
this personally. Unfortunately, though, as often happens
in life, even when we know God's will we cannot find
the strength and determination to fulfill it. But I will
speak about this later.

I met Fr. John in the autumn of 1982, when immediately
after my Baptism I arrived at the Pskov-Caves Monastery.
Back then he did not particularly impress me: a very kind
old man, quite robust (he was only seventy-two then),
always in a hurry, always surrounded by a crowd of
pilgrims. Other residents of the monastery looked much
more severely ascetic and monastic. But not much time at
all passed before I began to understand that this old man
was what in old Russia had been called an 'elder'
since ancient times. This is the rarest and most precious
phenomenon in the Church.

Trust and obedience are the main rule of the relationship
between a Christian and his spiritual father. Of course,
one cannot manifest absolute obedience to every spiritual
father. Such spiritual directors are a rarity. This is
quite a delicate matter. Very serious spiritual and life
tragedies often happen when unreasoning priests imagine
themselves to be elders, and their unfortunate spiritual
children take upon themselves a form of absolute obedience
which is beyond their strength and entirely inappropriate
in our times. Fr. John never ordered or forced anyone to
listen to his spiritual advice. People would come to free,
unfeigned obedience to him through experience and time. He
never called himself an elder. When he was told he was, he
would smile and say that there are no elders nowadays,
only experienced old men. He remained convinced of that.
However, I am convinced that in his person the Lord sent
me a true elder, who knew God's will for me and all
that is needed for my salvation.

I recall, when I was still a young novice in the
monastery, a Moscow pilgrim came up to me and told me what
he had just witnessed: Fr. John, surrounded by pilgrims,
was hurrying through the monastery courtyard towards the
church. Suddenly a tear-stained woman with a
three-year-old child in her arms rushed up to him:
"Batiushka, bless me to go ahead with his surgery-the
doctors say it must be done immediately, in Moscow."
And then something happened which stunned both me and the
pilgrim who told me the story. Fr. John stopped and firmly
told her: "Under no circumstances. He'll die on
the operating table. Pray and give him medical treatment,
but by no means have the surgery. He'll recover."
And he made the sign of the Cross over the child.

The pilgrim and I sat down and were terrified by our own
speculations: What if Fr. John is mistaken? What if the
baby dies? What would the mother do to Fr. John if that
happens? Of course, we couldn't believe that Fr. John
had displayed a crude denial of medicine, something which,
however rare, still is not unheard of in some Church
circles. We knew of many cases when Fr. John would bless
surgery and even insist on it. There were many well-known
doctors among his spiritual children. With dread we
awaited what would happen. Would the broken-hearted mother
show up in the monastery and raise a monstrous scandal? Or
would nothing of the kind happen, as Fr. John had
predicted?

Apparently nothing happened, because Fr. John went on as
before with his daily walk between the church and his
cell, surrounded by pilgrims filled with hope and
gratitude. It remained for us to assume that Fr. John
foresaw God's Providence for that infant, and took
upon himself the great responsibility for his life. And
the Lord did not put the faith and hope of his faithful
servant to shame.

I remembered that incident ten years later, in 1993. A
very similar story ended, on the one hand, tragically from
a human perspective, but on the other, due to Fr.
John's prayers, it served for the eternal salvation of
a Christian soul and as a profound lesson for those who
witnessed it.

Usually, when he was firmly convinced of the correctness
and necessity of his counsels for someone who had turned
to him, Batiushka tried to persuade, convince, or even beg
and plead with the person to carry out what was necessary.
If that person stubbornly insisted on his own will,
Batiushka usually sighed and said, 'Well, then, try
it. Do what you think is right.' And always, as far as
I know about such cases, those who did not follow Fr.
John's wise spiritual advice would bitterly repent of
it in the end. As a rule, the next time they came to him
it would be with the firm intention of doing as he said.
Fr. John always received such people with true love and
compassion, and never begrudged them his time, trying with
all his might to correct their mistake.

There lived in Moscow a very interesting and unique woman,
Valentina Pavlovna Konovalova.& She was a kind of real
Moscow kupchikha (of the merchant class), and
looked as though she had walked out of a canvas by
Kustodiev. At the beginning of the 1990s she was sixty
years old. She was the director of a large grocery depot
on Prospect Mira. Plump and stocky, she would sit regally
at the desk in her office, where behind her, even in the
most difficult Soviet times, large icons hung on the
walls. On the floor by her desk there lay a huge plastic
sack of money. She herself, at her own discretion, would
decide how to spend that money-whether to send her
subordinates to buy a consignment of fresh vegetables, or
to give it away to the poor and vagrants who flocked to
her store in large numbers. Her employees feared her, but
loved her. During Lent she would arrange for an Unction
service right in her office, which even the Tartars who
worked at the depot would reverently attend. During the
years of deficiency, Moscow priests and sometimes even
bishops would drop in on her. With some she would be
respectful, while with others, whose "ecumenism"
she did not approve of, she would be curt and even rather
rude.

Many times, as part of my obedience, I would drive from
[the Pskov-Caves Monastery in] Pechory to Moscow in a
large truck to purchase provisions for the monastery for
Pascha and Nativity. Valentina Pavlovna would receive us
novices in a very warm and motherly way, and we became
friends with her, especially since we had a favorite topic
for our conversations: our common confessor, Fr. John.
Batiushka was perhaps the only man in the world whom
Valentina Pavlovna feared, infinitely respected, and
loved. Twice a year, with her closest colleagues she would
go to the monastery in Pechory, and would fast and confess
there. It would be impossible to recognize her then. She
would be so meek, quiet and shy-in no way reminiscent of
the "Moscow queen."

At the end of 1993 several changes took place in my life.
I was appointed as Superior of the metochion of the
Pskov-Caves Monastery in Moscow, the present-day Sretensky
Monastery, and I often made trips to Pechory. Valentina
Pavlovna, who had a cataract in her eye, once requested
that I ask Fr. John's blessing for her to have the
cataract removed at the Feodorov Ophthalmic Institute. Fr.
John's reply surprised me a little: 'No, no, by no
means. Not now, let some time go by.' The next day I
passed his exact words on to her, and Valentina Pavlovna
was very distressed-everything had been already arranged
at the Feodorov Institute. So she wrote Fr. John a
detailed letter, explaining to him that it was a very
simple operation, not worth any attention, and asking for
his blessing again.

Fr. John, of course, knew as well as she did what kind of
surgery it was, and that it didn't pose any serious
threat. But, having read her letter, he became terribly
anxious. We sat together for a long time, and he kept
persuading me that it was essential to talk Valentina
Pavlovna out of having the surgery at that time. He wrote
to her again. He asked, begged, and even ordered her, as
her spiritual father, to put off the surgery. I had two
free weeks coming up. I hadn't had a vacation for over
ten years, so Fr. John blessed me to go to a sanatorium in
the Crimea for two weeks, and to take Valentina Pavlovna
with me. He told her about that in the letter as well,
adding that she was to have her surgery a month after the
vacation. "If she has her surgery now, she'll
die," he sadly told me when we were saying goodbye to
each other.

However, in Moscow I realized that we had run into a brick
wall. All of a sudden, Valentina Pavlovna, probably for
the first time in her life, rose up against the will of
her spiritual father. She at first firmly refused to go to
the Crimea, but then it seemed as though she was humbling
herself. But she was quite indignant that Fr. John was
making so much fuss about such a trifle. I told her that
no matter what, I was going to work on making our
arrangements, and we would soon be going to the Crimea.

A few days later I received the Patriarch's blessing
for the trip, after which I ordered two reservations,
which were not difficult to obtain at that time of year.
Then I called the store to tell Valentina Pavlovna about
our departure. "She's in the hospital, in
surgery," her assistant told me.

"What?!" I cried. "But Fr. John strictly
forbade her!"

It turned out that a couple of days earlier some nun,
formerly a doctor, had called on her, and having found out
about her cataract problem, didn't agree with Fr.
John's decision, either. So she took it upon herself
to get a blessing from one of the spiritual fathers of the
Holy Trinity-St. Sergius Lavra. A blessing was received,
and Valentina Pavlovna went straight to the Feodorov
Institute, hoping that after a short and simple operation
she would go with me to the Crimea. However, during the
surgery, right on the operating table, she had a serious
stroke and was totally paralyzed. As soon as I learned
about it I rushed to call Fr. Philaret, Fr. John's
long-time cell-attendant. In exceptional cases Fr. John
would go down to Fr. Philaret's cell and use his
phone.

"How could you! Why didn't you listen to
me?" cried Fr. John, almost in tears. "If I
insist on something, that means I know what I'm
doing!"

What could I tell him? I asked Fr. John what I was to do.
Valentina Pavlovna was still unconscious. Fr. John said I
should take the Reserved Gifts from the church to my cell,
and as soon as Valentina Pavlovna regained consciousness I
was to immediately go and confess her and give her Holy
Communion.

By Fr. John's prayers, Valentina Pavlovna became
conscious the next day. Her relatives immediately informed
me, and I was at the hospital in half an hour. She was
wheeled out to me in one of the intensive care wards. She
was lying, so tiny, under a white sheet. She could not
speak, and upon seeing me started crying. Her confession,
that she had given in to the enemy's temptation in her
disobedience to and distrust of her spiritual father, was
clear without any words. I read the prayer of absolution
over her and gave her Communion. We bade farewell to each
other. The next day Fr. Vladimir Chuvikin communed her
again, and soon afterwards she died. According to an
ancient Church tradition, the soul of a person who has
been vouchsafed to receive Communion on the day of his
death goes to the Lord's throne, escaping the
tollhouses. This happens either to great ascetics, or
people with exceptionally pure hearts. Or to those who
have very powerful intercessors.&

The history of the restoration of Sretensky Monastery has
also been continually connected with Archimandrite John.
In that year, 1993, I came to Fr. John with a whole mass
of problems. After a long conversation in Fr. John's
cell, he did not give me any direct answers, and we were
in a hurry to attend the Vigil service to Archangel
Michael. I prayed in the cliros, and Fr. John prayed in
the altar. I was preparing to vest in order to pray the
Akathist, when Fr. John literally ran out of the altar,
and taking me by the hand, said joyfully, "You will
found a metochion of the Pskov-Caves Monastery in
Moscow."

"Batiushka," I said, "His Holiness the
Patriarch does not bless the founding of metochions in
Moscow, unless they be of stavropegic monasteries. Another
monastery made such a request to the Patriarch not long
ago, and His Holiness answered that if we were to give
churches to all the monasteries desiring metochions, there
would be no parishes left in Moscow.

[He said,] "Have no fear! Go straight to His Holiness
and ask to open a metochion of the Pskov-Caves
Monastery."

He gave me a heartfelt blessing, according to his custom,
and there was nothing left for me to do but to kiss his
hand and place all hope in God's hands, and in his
prayers.

Everything turned out just as Fr. John said. I made my
request, albeit not without fear, to His Holiness the
Patriarch about the opening of a metochion of the
Pskov-Caves Monastery. But the Patriarch replied very
mercifully to this request, blessed this resolution, and
immediately delegated the matter to [Vicar Bishop] Arseny
and [Dean] Fr. Vladimir Divakov. Thus was the first and
only diocesan metochion opened in Moscow, which, as Fr.
John also had foretold, would later become an independent
monastery, never losing its spiritual connection with
either Pechory or Fr. John. It is superfluous to say that
Fr. John's blessing and counsel in the monastery's
life was most precious and desirable for us. I must
confess, though, that not all the letters I received were
affectionate. Sometimes his letters were so stern that I
could not regain my composure for several days.

Usually when someone begins to reminisce about Fr. John,
they write about how good, kind, and loving he was. Yes,
this is undoubtedly true; I never knew a man more able to
express fatherly, Christian love. However, it must be
added that Fr. John could be truly tough when necessary.
He could at times find such words of reproach that one
would not envy the recipient afterwards. I recall when I
was a novice in Pechory, I happened to hear what Fr. John
said to two young hieromonks: "What kind of monks are
you? You are only jolly fellows." Fr. John was never
afraid to speak the truth without respect of persons, and
he did so first of all in order to correct and save the
soul of the one with whom he spoke, be he a hierarch or a
simple novice. This firmness and spiritual integrity was
of course placed in Fr. John's soul from early
childhood, when he knew those great ascetics and New
Martyrs. This was all an expression of true Christian love
for God and people. It was also, of course, an expression
of a true Christian consciousness. Here is one reply to a
letter from me in 1997: "Here is another example of
an analogous situation from my memory's archives. I
was twelve years old at the time, but the impression was
so earth-shakingly strong, that to this day I can still
see everything that happened, and remember each
participant by name.

"A remarkable Vladyka served in Orel-Archbishop
Seraphim Ostroymov-an exceedingly intelligent, kind and
­loving man, about whom there could be no end of
eulogy. He prepared himself by his life for a crown of
martyrdom, which did in fact come to pass. So, on
Forgiveness Sunday this godly hierarch banished two monks
from the monastery, Igumen Callistos and Hierodeacon
Tikhon, for some transgression. He banished them
authoritatively, in front of other people, thereby
preserving others from temptation, and then immediately
preached a homily about Forgiveness Sunday and asked
forgiveness of all.

"My childish consciousness was quite shaken by what
had taken place, precisely because the one thing occurred
right after the other: first banishment, that is, the
absence of forgiveness, and then the humble asking of
forgiveness for himself, and his own forgiveness of
everyone. I only understood one thing: that punishment can
serve as the beginning of forgiveness, and without it,
there can be no forgiveness.

"Now I bow down before Vladyka's courage and
wisdom, for the lesson he taught remained as a living
example for all present then, as you see-for a whole
lifetime."

What else can I write of essential importance, so that Fr.
John himself could read these lines and confirm the
veracity of this testimony?

During the years of our relationship I noticed that Fr.
John had particular principles regarding spiritual
counsel. Of course, he did not apply them automatically.
Interesting to me was his advice about marriage. He
blessed marriage only after the bride and bridegroom had
known each other for at least three years. This seems a
very long term to today's impetuous youth. However,
many cases have shown how Fr. John's ­experience
and insistence on this time of testing could save the
souls of the husband and wife, and of their family. I know
many instances when priests out of pity shortened this
term before marriage given by Fr. John, with woeful
consequences for the young families.

With regard to monastic tonsure, Fr. John as a rule also
demanded a significant time of testing. He likewise placed
great emphasis upon parental blessing. For example, I
waited ten years for Fr. John's decision about my
tonsure, until my mother blessed me to be a monk. In
response to all of my impatient requests for the tonsure,
Fr. John always persuaded me to wait for my mother's
blessing. He assured me that the Lord would not forget
this patience and obedience. I remembered these words when
they tonsured me in Donskoy Monastery. It turned out that
I was tonsured on my very birthday, when I turned
thirty-three, and was named after my favorite saint-Holy
Hierarch Tikhon, Patriarch of Moscow.

Fr. John related to hierarchs and archpastors of the
Church with enormous reverence, love, and obedience. He
was truly a man of the Church. Many times did he bless
people to do exactly as His Holiness [the Patriarch] would
decide, or as the bishop or the abbot would bless. This
was based upon faith that on earth truth abides only in
the Church, is deeply felt there, and is brought to Her
spiritual children. Fr. John did not countenance any
schisms or revolts; he always fearlessly and fearsomely
spoke out against them, although he knew what slanders and
even hatred he would have to drink for this. But he
endured it all, lest he himself or his spiritual flock
stray from the royal path of the Church.

This applies also to the trials our Church has experienced
over the recent decades: reformist tendencies on the one
hand, and on the other, morbid eschatological moods. In
both cases, Fr. John exercised discernment, showing love
for those who were confused spiritually due to faulty
reasoning and the enemy's snares, yet warning of the
harm which they were actively and even viciously ready to
bring to the Church. Nearly a century of Church life gave
Fr. John a serious advantage in the discernment of
spirits, in determining what one or another distraction,
renovation, or "zeal not according to knowledge"
(cf. Rom. 10:2) might bring. Truly, there is nothing new
under the sun. "I will not participate in your
campaign," he wrote to one young and very sincere
hieromonk, who was proposing that Fr. John participate in
the movement "Life without the Social Security
Number." He wrote, "The very spirit of such
activity, with its abundant selfishness, noise, and hope
in man rather than in God, yes, and especially with its
criticism of the Church hierarchy, which springs out like
a fountain in your words, forbids me to do so. I have
already seen such things in the activities of the
renovationists, who rose up against the most gentle
Patriarch Tikon, in fact, against the Lord Himself and His
Church."

Fr. John many times expressed his sober and deeply
considered reaction to the problems of the global computer
accounting system and other similar tendencies of the
modern world. This has all been published in many places
and has served for many as a cause of spiritual peace,
calming of the spirit of revolt, and trust in the Russian
Orthodox Church. For others it unfortunately served as a
reason to attack Fr. John, and even to slander him
outright.

I think that this experience of slander and hatred coming
during the last years of his life was sent by the Lord
providentially. St. Barsanuphius of Optina, it seems,
wrote somewhere that the Lord sends such trials to his
servants precisely at the end of their lives, as an image
of the Savior's Golgotha.

Several years before these events, Fr. John also stood
firm under fire in order to preserve the people of the
Church from the temptation of a new renovationism. He
often met and conversed with currently popular supporters
of modernization and renovation in the Church. Only after
exhausting every means of convincing them of the extreme
danger of this path, did he pronounce clearly, precisely,
for all to hear, and with full responsibility for his
words: "If we do not destroy this movement, it will
destroy the Church."

I was a witness to how Fr. John endured the hatred and
false accusations poured out upon him for standing in the
Truth of Christ. I saw all his pain, but also his good
nature, when he endured misunderstanding and betrayal.
Batiushka never lost his infinite love for his offenders,
or his Christian forgiveness. I will always remember the
words of his sermon in the St. Michael Cathedral of the
Pskov-Caves Monastery in 1985. "The Lord has given us
a commandment to love our neighbors. But we mustn't
worry about whether or not they love us. We must only take
care that we love them."

One Moscow priest, a spiritual son of Fr. John, came to me
with a terrible request: to return the epitrachelion with
which Fr. John had blessed him for the priesthood. This
priest, as he said, was disappointed with Fr. John for not
supporting his dissident political views. This was in the
late eighties. What didn't this priest say? But he was
deaf to my arguments: that Fr. John had himself spent many
years in prison camps; that he was tortured but not
broken; that he was the last person who could be suspected
of conformism. With a heavy heart I gave this
epitrachelion to Batiushka. His reaction stunned me. He
crossed himself, kissed the priestly vestment reverently,
and said, "I gave it to him with love, and I accept
it again with love." Later, this priest joined
another jurisdiction. He did not like it there either, and
joined another.&

Neither can I hide the following fact, which might evoke
varying responses, but for the sake of truth I cannot keep
silent about it. Yes, Fr. John certainly did revere and
submit to the Church hierarchy, but this did not mean
automatic, unthinking submission. I witnessed an occasion
when one of the monastery's abbots and the ruling
hierarch tried to persuade Batiushka to give his blessing
on their decision, with which Fr. John did not agree. They
needed the elder's authority to support their
decision. They approached Batiushka seriously, as they
say, "with a knife to the throat." Monks and
priests can imagine what it means to stand up to pressure
from their ruling hierarch or abbot. But Fr. John
withstood this prolonged pressure quite calmly. He
respectfully, patiently, and meekly explained that he
could not say "I bless" to something that did
not agree with his soul, but should his superiors consider
it necessary to take this action, then he would
unmurmuringly accept their decision-they would answer for
it before God and the brothers. He said, however, that he
considered that this decision was being taken out of
passion, and he could not give his "good word"
on it.

Much more could be written, chiefly about how the souls of
people who met Fr. John were transformed and resurrected,
how people obtained faith and salvation. But this is bound
up with people who are still alive, and therefore I cannot
relate these stories without their permission.

In conclusion I would like to say just one thing: I thank
the Lord that by His great mercy He gave me, a sinner, the
chance to meet such a Christian in my life and to get to
know him. I think there has never been anything more
astounding in my life so far, nor is there ever likely to
be in its remainder.

Fr. John on his 95th birthday with brothers of the Pskov-Caves Monastery, 2005.